Background: We led this study to investigate the effect of injection of Dexmedetomidine as an additive to Lidocaine in the inferior alveolar nerve for patients undergoing lower bilateral impacted tooth extraction regarding postoperative pain, duration of postoperative analgesia, the over-all quantity of analgesia demanded in the first 24 h postoperatively, and the surgeon and the patient satisfaction.
Patients and methods: Sixty patients were included, so that 30 patients were in the Dexmedetomidine group and the other 30 in the Adrenaline group. The inferior alveolar nerve block was done bilaterally after general anaesthesia using Lidocaine with Dexmedetomidine or Adrenaline. The primary outcome was analgesia quality (pain intensity, the duration of postoperative analgesia, and the patient's whole demanded amount of analgesia), the haemodynamic parameters, patients and surgeon's satisfaction as secondary outcomes.
Results: The mean postoperative analgesia time in Group (D) is 362.3±12.3 min, which is higher than Group (A) 231.4±13.1 min. 83.3% of the Group (D) received no analgesics, and 16.7% received one dose, while in the Group (A), 50% received two doses, 33.3% received one dose, and 16.7% received no doses. The VAS score was lower for Group (D) than Group (A) except for zero, where there was no difference between them. The satisfaction was higher in Group (D) than the Group (A) for both the patients and the surgeons.
Conclusion: Adding 12.5μ/ml of Dexmedetomidine is an excellent additive to Lidocaine in Inferior alveolar nerve block regarding analgesia quality, patient and surgeon satisfaction in bilateral third molar teeth surgery.